Just read the new book by Michael Lewis, 'The Undoing Project,' about the working collaboration between psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who shared a Nobel Price for their ground-breaking work about how we make decisions.
Of special interest to me was a part about other 'fertile pairs', including two women who wrote mysteries together, a comedy duo, a pair of ice dancers ... naturally I thought of Mick and Keith.
These two psychologists had these characteristics:
- They worked so closely that even they couldn't separate their ideas. One of them would have a question, the other would start to answer, the other would build on that, the other would challenge it, etc. One of them said, 'You ask who did what? We didn't know at that time, not clearly. It was beautiful, nt knowing.
- They were together constantly for a number of years; their relationship was described as a 'platonic love affair.'
- They shared credit for all their work, even the occasional paper they would write separately.
- They were very different -- one outgoing the other reserved; one optimistic, the other pessimistic.
- They were better together. One said, 'I am not a genius. Neither is he. Together we are exceptional.'
...
Eventually, they drifted apart and stopped working. What happened?
- Envy. They didn't mind sharing credit with each other, but then the outside world started to give credit to one of them more than the other and it created problems.
- One of them got remarried and his new wife took up more of his time.
- They left Israel, a small country, and moved to different places in the United States.
- One of them remarked that collaboration is 'just not a stable structure. People aren't happy with it.'

Interesting stuff and I thought the parallels to Mick and Keith are striking.